Pundits will argue for days about whether President Obama’s speech tonight was a success. Already (45 minutes after the conclusion) opinion is breaking the predictable way. Republicans think it’s vague and Obama lacked substantive details about how he will address any of the issues mentioned. (I have to admit curing cancer in out liufetime seems a difficult task to accomplish.)
The LA Times’ take:
With his first formal address as president to a joint session of Congress — and speaking also to a national television audience — Obama attempted to add a new dimension to the debate over what the government can offer for a financial crisis that has gripped the nation in a worsening recession: a sense of hope.
“While our economy may be weakened and our confidence shaken,” the president said in his prime-time address, “though we are living through difficult and uncertain times, tonight I want every American to know this: We will rebuild, we will recover, and the United States of America will emerge stronger than before.”
I think it was a good speech. I think Obama touched on very important issues. I didn’t hear a lot of details, but I’m not sure it’s realistic to expect an address such as this to give a line by line action plan to address issues. I do think the President talked about dealing with very important problems. I also appreciate that he mentioned charter schools and familial responsibility in the context of education reform.
He also talked about business, and small business, being vital to the economic recovery.
The New York Times’ take:
Obama Assures Nation: ‘We Will Rebuild’
President Obama told Congress, “Now is the time to act boldly.”
WASHINGTON — President Obama urged the nation on Tuesday to see the economic crisis as reason to raise its ambitions, calling for expensive new efforts to address energy, health care and education programs even as he warned that more money might be needed to bail out banks.
In his first address to a joint session of Congress, Mr. Obama mixed an acknowledgment of the depth of the economic problems with a Reaganesque exhortation to American resilience and an expansive agenda with a pledge to begin paring down a soaring budget deficit.
“While our economy may be weakened and our confidence shaken, though we are living through difficult and uncertain times, tonight I want every American to know this,” Mr. Obama said. “We will rebuild, we will recover, and the United States of America will emerge stronger than before.”
He was greeted in the House of Representatives chamber with gregarious applause, particularly from Democrats who hold a strong majority. Yet even Republicans leaned in close to Mr. Obama as he passed by them in the narrow aisle and made his way to the speaker’s dais at the front of the room.
And from London Times:
President Barack Obama: America faces ‘day of reckoning’
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